The Port Hills
Sir, —You reply to ■ correspondent: "The stylised hills in the background represent the effects of light on the hills, which had a good deal of bush in 1830.” One imagines the reference is to the coloured glass window in the new terminal building at Lyttelton. A check in Canterbury history books will confirm that in 1850, while much of Banks Peninsula was covered with podocarp forest, the Port Hills round Lyttelton boasted only a little bush in the valleys. This is dearly seen in early drawings and paintings of the harbour. Mrs Godley wrote, on April 8, 1850: “The country is quite different from Otago and not so pretty.... There are much higher hills and hardly any woods, only up between the hills run little patches." And Samuel Butler, on January 27. 1800: "... the little townlet . . . nestling beneath the bare hills ... the tussocks of brown grass—the huge wide-leaved flax, . . ."—Yours, etc., RUTH FRANCE. December 21. 1065.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30940, 22 December 1965, Page 12
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159The Port Hills Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30940, 22 December 1965, Page 12
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